The Best Places to Check for Ancestors' Records
Brought to you in association with The Ellis Island Foundation.Now you're ready to search for the records your ancestors have left behind. The first place to go is to your relatives. Ask them to look for any official records they may have. Carefully look over the documents. Have you found new names? Addresses? Dates of important events? Some of this information will help you find other documents.
Vital Records
When you're ready to go outside the family, begin with the most common documents: Vital records — birth, marriage, and death certificates.
Everyone is born, and everyone dies. That's one reason why birth and death certificates (vital records) are among the easiest and best places to begin searching for family documents.
Vital records often have lots of information, including hard-to-locate maiden names and addresses. Birth certificates include facts about the child's parents; death certificates, filled out by relatives, often give facts about survivors.
When you start to look for your family's vital records, begin with your parents' birth and marriage certificates. Then start looking for your grandparents' documents. Move slowly backward in time.
Where to Look: Vital records are local records. They are usually kept in the capital of the county where someone lived, though some states keep them in their capital cities. If your ancestors lived in the same state as you do, your parents may be able to tell you where to write for their records. If you're searching in another state, or if you don't know where to go, the fastest way to discover where your ancestors' vital records are is to look in a booklet called "Where to Write for Vital Records." It lists every state and explains where to find birth, marriage, divorce, and death records. To get a copy, write to the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. There is a small charge. Excerpts from the 1990 edition are reprinted in the Appendix. When you find out where the records are kept, send for them by indicating the name of the person whose records you are looking for, and the actual or approximate date (you should at least have a year) when you believe an event happened. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope with your request. The clerk will conduct a search, and if the records exist they will be sent to you — usually after you pay a fee — within a few weeks.
Religious Records
Vital records, as important as they are, were not kept formally by many states before about 1900. If you're looking for people who lived long before that year, you may not find any government records of their birth and death.
However, there is another place that may have some of your ancestors' vital records. If you're lucky enough to know what religious institution those family members attended, there may be something of interest in their records. Many churches and synagogues kept notations about their members' births, christenings, marriages, and deaths.
Where to Look: This may take some detective work. If you know your ancestors' religious affiliation, check see if there are any institutions of that type in the place where they lived.
If you are able to determine where your ancestor worshipped, write the office there. Explain that you are conducting a family history search, and list the names you are researching, the dates of their lives, and the years you believe they might have belonged to the church or synagogue. "If you have any records of my ancestor, I would be most interested in seeing them. Please let me know if there is any fee." As always, enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Cemeteries are not the first place you'd think to look for records. But if you know where your ancestors are buried, you may find a good source of family information.
Where to Look: Relatives often know where ancestors are buried. If they don't, check the individual's death certificate. These certificates generally give the name of a cemetery.
When you have located the proper cemetery, call or write to their office. Tell them you are working on a genealogical project, and explain that your ancestors are buried there. Give the ancestors' names and dates of death, and ask if the cemetery has any records that you might get copies of (or look at).
If you live nearby, you may want to go with your parents to pay a visit to the cemetery. Ask for directions, hours, and specific locations of your ancestors' graves.
The main reason to visit a cemetery is to look at tombstones. Many tombstones list genealogies, such as "Beloved father, devoted husband, cherished grandfather." Older stones frequently list several names, including infant children. Jewish tombstones usually have inscribed, in Hebrew, the name of the father of the deceased.
If you visit a cemetery, make a note of inscriptions and any decorative stonework. Take a camera, and photograph the stones.
Mark the dates on the tombstones, but absolutely do not assume they are correct without proof. Because tombstone dates were second hand information, taken in a time of grief and difficult to correct if inaccurate, they are among the most suspect of records.
When you are visiting a family grave, be sure to look over the neighboring plots. If your ancestors were immigrants, they may be buried in a fraternal organization's section of a cemetery. Other family members may also be buried nearby. Sketch out the location of the stone and its relationship to other stones of significance to your family. If you have located the grave of a distant ancestor, ask at the office who is paying the upkeep fee. You may discover a lost relative this way.
Census Forms
Every ten years since 1790, the United States has commissioned a head-count of every inhabitant of the country. The census completed in 1990 was the 21st in this ongoing series.
These counts take place all across the nation on one specific day determined by Congress. During the last few censuses, many people simply mailed in forms with the information required about their households. If a household did not respond, someone was sent to the home.
But in the years before mail-in forms became common, the census was a national counting party. "Census takers" or "enumerators" went door to door in every community in the United States. They didn't just count people; they also accumulated a lot of information.
If you know where your ancestor lived in any year ending in "0" from 1910 back, you can look through microfilm copies of the actual sheets of that census and discover what the census taker found out about your family.
(To protect privacy, census records are off-limits to the general public for 72 years. In 1992, the 1920 census was opened for general viewing.) When you look at a census record, you'll see — in the census taker's own handwriting — what he learned about your ancestor's home.
Census records before 1900 have less information. Until 1850, only the name of the head of household was listed. And the records of the 1890 census were lost almost completely in a fire. In spite of all that, federal census records can be helpful. By looking up a family across two or three censuses, you can monitor changes, find out about children you never knew existed, or learn the names of children you knew about but could not identify.
Where to Look: U.S. census records are the property of the government. Copies are kept on microfilm at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and in branch offices in 12 other cities. In addition, major research and genealogical libraries often have copies of the census.
To locate your ancestor in any census before 1920, ask for an index and look him or her up by state and last name. Some y
